Love and Robotics (22 page)

“Uh, it’s three forty -”

“Can I stay?” Josh asked in the same breath.

“Of course.” Alfred tried to sound bluff and overdid it. As Josh whispered, “Good,” and settled in the hollow of his groin, he wondered how he would survive the night. Go to sleep, think chaste thoughts. Ignore the delightful body pressed against your erection.

The next morning they woke instantly, as though someone had thrown a switch. They were reluctant to leave their mutual warmth.

“Hello, sleepyhead,” Josh said.

“Hello yourself.”

“That’s the best sleep I’ve had. You don’t think? -”

Alfred could hardly refuse. “For the foreseeable future.”

So every night, circumstances permitting, Josh slept in his bed. There was never a point where it stopped being weird, but if these were the conditions of their friendship, he accepted them.

The second change was towards the end of the week. The old Josh had been into everything. This one followed him like a sheep, not caring one way or another. They’d gone sailing, normally something he enjoyed, but he sat on the deck in a miserable huddle. His camera hung around his neck, unused. When they came home, Josh went onto the veranda. After an hour Alfred wandered out to see what he was doing. He was staring across the bay, collar up.

“Will you teach me to fight?” Josh asked.

“What kind?”

“Everything.” He gritted his teeth. “I want to protect myself.”

He wasn’t sure what to make of Josh’s new hobby. Derkins was anti - “It’s like loosing a sonic weapon on the population -” but he couldn’t be with Josh all the time. There were too many shysters about.

“We’ll start with classic stuff,” Alfred said. “Some moves look fancy but don’t work in practice. Never take a knife to a fight, they’ll turn it against you.”

Alfred was no slouch in combat, his body was a tapestry of past battles. Yet the artificial disarmed him every time.

“You’re not throwing this, are you?” he asked, a flicker of the old Josh in his eyes.

“Why would I do that?” Alfred groaned.

Since he was only human, he set up an assault course around the garden. Josh practised every morning, working his way around the blocks and targets. He’d pummel the wood until it splintered, his fists a flurry. His time improved by a few seconds every day.

Watching these displays, Alfred’s mind turned on the one question he had sworn he would never ask. What would become of Josh?

He knew. The fact he had always known, long before his feelings shaded into love, didn’t soften the blow. CER’s robots had a shelf life. They’d trundle on five years, the acme of achievement. Along would come a newer, slicker robot and they’d get bunged on the scrap heap. Gussy had shown him once - “ the robot graveyard”, she called it. Scenes washed up from his imagination: Josh left to rust, to die, fully conscious in a sea of broken bodies.

There was only one way out. Someone would have take a fancy to Josh, someone with a clean bill of mental health. Wake up and smell the engine oil: no one would give him to a functioning
alcoholic with trauma. They’d want somebody rich, influential, female. Same sex love might be tolerated, but it wasn’t respectable. His visions went from the general to the specific. An ageing vamp like Lois Putnam, snaring Josh in her brassy hair. A shy ingénue, unable to speak to a real man. A harpy with impossible standards. He’d burn out within a month.

He couldn’t help him, or save him. He could only watch.

Perhaps Josh sensed his distress. After a week of this - rising early, hours of practice, a tussle where he demonstrated everything he’d learned - he cracked.

It started with a prop. Josh was bored with chopping blocks, so Alfred rigged up a punch bag on the veranda. “Focus,” he said, as Josh stared at it. “Picture your opponent.”

The fists whirled so fast you couldn’t see them. An alien savagery lit his eyes.

“Josh?”

Hundreds of blows landed on the punch bag. It split, showering the planking with peas.

“Stop!”

The rope snapped, sending the bag crashing to the floor. Josh was upon it, face contorting.

Alfred dragged him off. “Josh. Look at me.” A spasm passed through the small frame. Josh lifted his eyes.

Alfred never wanted to see an expression like that again. As though everything he cherished lay in the dust, as though nothing was left. He pulled Josh into his arms, as he would if anyone he loved was suffering. “Tell me what’s going on. Please.”

“The Code -”

“Fuck the Code!”

“I feel so - broken. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

“You’re not broken. Got that? You’re Josh, and you’re amazing.” Alfred held the singular little face. “You can always talk to me.”

“You don’t know what it’s like -”

“It won’t go away overnight. I should know.” As Josh stared, appalled, he nodded. “It was a long time ago but I still remember.”

They took their tea in the garden, beneath the jasmine arch. You could see people winding their way up the cliff, the fishermen bringing in their smacks.

It started innocuously. Josh laid his first olive aside with a grimace. “Tastes like posh soap.” It didn’t stop him from polishing off his cheese. “Must’ve been a mouse in a past life,” Alfred teased.

All the same, there was a wrong note. Josh was trying too hard, like an imitation of how Alfred expected him to behave. So when “What happened?” came, he was prepared.

“It was a man I - lived with. I asked him to leave. He didn’t take it well.”

It had been more than that, much more, but he wasn’t sure what he was allowed to tell Josh. It’d mean unpicking his and Ken’s relationship: its grubby beginnings, his great betrayal, the Event. No one could say he hadn’t been punished.

“Is that why you have bad dreams?”

“Do I?” Alfred never remembered them.

“Sometimes you start fighting and shouting, but you can’t wake up.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“It’s alright. We’ll be alright.” Josh took his hand and held it.

Alfred didn’t crane to see if anyone could see. Frankly he didn’t care. They sat hand in hand, watching the sunset bleed into the sky. He didn’t know if he had helped Josh, but Josh had certainly helped him.

                                          ***

Slowly but surely, Josh healed. It began that day on the veranda, when he learned it could have happened to anybody. He looked at himself in the mirror and lifted his chin.
You have nothing to be ashamed of.

Alfred hadn’t volunteered further information, but he didn’t want to pry. It must have taken courage to admit he had been a victim himself. Perhaps it was as well: if he had learned the identity of Alfred’s attacker he would have killed him without a thought.

He kept doing his updates, Alfred composed his
Dispatches
. When recounting it later they focused upon the stories, the characters. Like Roadkill Trev, who they met dragging a blood soaked skunk behind him. “G’day, cocks!” he cried. “Fancy a cookout?” He spent the next hour demonstrating how to put an animal out of its misery - “Give it a bonk on the head, it won’t even feel it.” Or Marisa Marsters, a madcap dilettante. She went skydiving and whacked into the side of a cliff; she was last seen in a full body cast, indestructible. Or the squeaky blonde who leapt out of nowhere, exclaimed, “I’m writing a book about you!” and had her picture taken with them.

These were the signposts of their journey as described to friends, landlords, enemies. Running alongside, like a secret seam, were Josh’s feelings. He didn’t know where they came from. The Code stated he shouldn’t experience emotions other than content and gratitude. Yet here they were.

He’d wake up in the night, feel if Alfred was there. If he wasn’t he felt a terrible desolation. If the solid form lay beside him he’d edge in closer, feel safe. If his timing was off and he couldn’t go back to sleep, he’d watch Alfred’s face, the expressions crossing it. He became aware of this need for his friend during the day, too - not the co-dependency of a teenager but wanting Alfred with him, as was his right.

Perhaps that’s why it took him so long to identify it. It was like nothing he’d known, and it grew stronger every day. Even though he knew it must be wrong, he nurtured it and kept it safe.

***

It was Josh’s turn to choose the next destination. They’d turned it into a game: they’d get up, have breakfast and sit with a globe between them. They’d close their eyes, spin the globe and go where their finger landed.

Josh did all this, solemn as a child making a birthday wish. “Where’ve you got?” Alfred asked, magnifying glass at the ready.

“Farva.” Josh could picture it: sleepy canals, sepia ruins, groves haunted by ancient gods.

“Farva it is.”

Farvan Finagles

If Alfred had guessed the thoughts Josh was having, he might have stopped torturing himself. Knowing him, he would find something else to worry about. Was he the sort of person to inflict on
anyone
, never mind someone as impressionable as the artificial?

It should’ve grown easier with time. Spending all their work and leisure hours together, holding each other in the still of the night. On one hand they could cosy up, Josh’s leg over his, face against his neck. The other - they might have been worlds apart.

The problem was Josh’s innocence. He was unbelievably
good,
a goodness you couldn’t believe existed. It dumbfounded Alfred at every turn.
He
wasn’t good. He knew his faults, knew that when it came to it, he was a cock. A drunken, self pitying, manic depressive cock.

He was used to getting what he wanted. As a young man he’d acted like he was God’s gift and when you do that, people play along. There had always been fan boys to give him a thrill for the price of an autograph. He aged like a fine port, thinking soon it’d be time to settle down. Time to choose partners for more meaningful attributes than cute faces and bum hithers.

In his head he was thirty, fit and unmarked, so when he saw revulsion at his middle aged spread, wrinkles and scars, it hurt. He’d turned into something he despised, a leech who went crawling for trade, for a hand or blow job on a dark pier. One night, sick at heart, he swore it would never happen again. He hadn’t had sex in so long, he had almost forgotten what it was like.

Just as he’d accepted his loveless, lonely lot, Josh entered his life. A lifetime’s experience was useless. You cracked a grubby joke and he stared. Once they met two women who introduced themselves as “Beatrix and my better half.”  Josh called them “those nice sisters”!

You’d think you were getting somewhere. Flowers your side of the bed, looking at you
that
way, ambushing you nude. Alas, there’d be an explanation. He liked flowers, he was adjusting his eyes, he was so used to being naked he’d forgotten the need for clothes. He had no idea where you could and couldn’t touch. Alfred would take himself off to the bathroom for a shamefaced quarter hour. Then Josh knocked and asked if he was alright, he was making funny noises -

Round and round they went, the old joke of lover and beloved. Talk about humiliating.

One of the nicest things about travelling with Josh was he had no preconceptions. A human would draw up a list a mile long, ticking off ‘must see’ sites, ‘must do’ activities. That’s all very well for a skim but it doesn’t give you a feel for a place.

Alfred couldn’t abide tourism. The people were bad enough: loud voiced with tacky shirts, clicking their beebos, telling little Timmy that Empress Alvira was stabbed twenty times on this very spot. It was the
construct
of tourism he had issues with, how it robbed a destination of charm and mystery. How you’d be penned in for two hours, in shrivelling heat or pouring rain, only to be rushed around a temple like any other. All the places you wanted to see were cordoned off or out of order.

Since it was the Faith’s heartland there were no robots. Alfred saw people, natives and tourists alike, staring at Josh. He hoped the artificial wouldn’t notice. No such luck.

“They don’t like robots, do they?”

“Not really.”

The old Josh would have hopped on the next craft. Since then he’d developed a hard shell of bloody mindedness. The next time he caught somebody gawping - a padre on a cycle - he waved. As the priest watched in horror, he toasted him with engine oil.

They hurried through the obligatory “boring churchy stuff” (Alfred’s quote) and “artistic epiphanies” (Josh’s). They couldn’t avoid the Paradisium, although it was debatable how much a pair of atheists would get out of it. 

“Doesn’t it remind you of CER?” Josh kept saying, as their guide - a dyspeptic, harassed monk - took them from one dome to the next. As his creators were secular, he didn’t know anything about Zara. Alfred had to explain every mural. The war to recover Prince Caspar. Zara’s breakdown over her beloved Naomi. How she’d stormed the city singlehanded, only to be shot down by a flaming arrow. 

“That’s what the modern Faith is based upon,” Alfred finished.

“Is that it?”

“What do you mean, ‘Is that it?’”

“If you ask me, it’s Zara’s fault. Yes, Caspar shouldn’t have run off with that woman, but Zara was the one who kept them there. If she hadn’t sulked in her tent, the war would’ve ended and they could’ve gone home.”

“Ssh!”

“Naomi needn’t have died, she wouldn’t have gone mad. Why worship someone like that? She was an idiot.” 

Alfred half expected a fork of lightning to incinerate him. When it didn’t he shrugged. “You’ve got a point.”

“I know I have.”

While they didn’t have an audience with the Hierophant, they were in the crowd as she gave her blessing. She was a tall, bony old woman, any softness masked by crisp scarlet robes and mitre. You could tell, by the way she blinked and peered around, that she was slightly deaf.

“A turtle,” Josh said, an iconoclast to the last.

Sensing Josh was disappointed with the Holy City, Alfred thought he’d treat him to
his
idea of a religious experience. “We’re going to the opera!”

Opera going had certain rituals. After a siesta and freshen up, you dressed slowly and with care. He went into the bathroom and put his ensemble together. He thought he’d managed it but Josh beckoned him over. “Let me.”

Alfred had learned to expect this. With a human it might have been a come on, but Josh seemed oblivious as he smoothed down Alfred’s shirt front, buttoned it. “Do
I
look alright?” the artificial wanted to know.

As if he needed to ask. “You’ll do.” He hoped Josh didn’t hear the longing in his voice.

Next came a light but pricy supper in a private restaurant. As they ate, Alfred told him about the history and traditions of opera. Here, as in many areas, his friend’s education was lacking. “Do you know what’s playing tonight?” Josh asked.

“It’s three hundred years since Serafina Loretz’s birth, so probably one of hers. Even her duff ones are good.”

As it was a fine night and the opera house was only across the river, they walked. In the half light Josh’s antecedents were less obvious; several passersby looked at him admiringly. As they went beneath the bridge a woman approached them.

“Evening, gents.” She’d pegged them as Lilans. “Could you help a girl down on her luck?”

She had oily matted hair, moist lips and a velvet ribbon around her neck. With an insinuating wiggle she let them know exactly what form their help would take.

“No, thanks,” Alfred said. “We’re not interested.”

“I didn’t mean
you
,” she retorted. “Perhaps your friend - ?”

“He doesn’t want to either.” Before Josh could open his mouth he pulled him along.

“You couldn’t afford me anyway!” She sounded like a cat on heat. After a second’s thought, “
Faggot!
”

Alfred looked at her coldly. “With knobs on.” As she stood slack jawed, he put as much distance between himself and the whore as possible.

Josh strode to keep up. “Why were you so rude? She only wanted money.”

“If I opened my purse to every scabby doxy - ”

“I’m going to apologise.” Josh slipped from his friend’s grasp and ran down the path.

“Mind you don’t catch anything!” Alfred shouted.

Josh returned soon afterwards, nonplussed. “I gave her the money but she didn’t want it.”

“Charity begins at home. Now, if you want to get there in time ...”

They arrived at the Allegra with ten minutes to spare. Normally Alfred would admire the building’s classical lines and austere angels, but there wasn’t time. All he could see was the billboard for that evening’s entertainment.
The Clockwork Opera
by Serafina Loretz.

Fan - fucking - tastic. Josh’s first trip to the opera, and what was on the programme? The only work in the canon to feature a doomed romance with a robot. Someone up there didn’t like him.

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked. “Why aren’t we going in?”

“It’s
The Clockwork Opera
. It’s about -” Alfred flailed.

“A robot? Let me guess. It doesn’t have a happy ending?”

“I’m not saying that - ”

“It won’t offend me, if that’s what you’re worried about. Let’s go in.”

They had the best box in the house. Alfred showed Josh how to use his opera glass, warning him not to pinch it like other patrons did.

The Clockwork Opera
had once been his operatic passion. Lord Arthur took him to see it when he was twelve and it’d become a ritual. They’d seen it once a year till 2136, the year his parents died, and even then he’d booked a spare seat and tumbler of whisky. When he thought of the score he thought of his dad’s interpretations, the arias in his surprisingly fine voice. He tried taking Gussy, but opera bored her. Ken dismissed it as ‘foreign racket’, the pleb. His ambition to introduce it to somebody was put on ice, especially after the Event.

“
The Clockwork Opera
by Serafina Loretz!”

Like all operas the story was a skeleton for the music. No sooner has Hans, your typical blacksmith with a poet’s soul, complained that nothing happens to him than a stranger comes to the village. His name is Dr Borkin, he’s obviously evil as he has a moustache and sinister baritone. This Borkin was on the hammy side, but diabolical genius is never knowingly underplayed.

Soon everyone’s talking about the heavenly singing coming from his house. Hans and his friends want to get to the bottom of it. They sneak in while the doctor’s asleep and poke around. Enter Sidonie, played by celebrated diva Liu. She implores them to leave before her father wakes up, and gives them the flower from her hair.

Of course they fall to arguing who the flower belongs to. Aaron, Han’s best friend, points out that since he’s the town stud, it must be his. They agree their friendship is too important to be ruined by a crush and pledge to help whoever has a crack at Sidonie.

Hans mopes home. He’s shutting up the smithy when somebody taps on the window. He’s flabbergasted to see Sidonie - even more so when she declares her love. This being traditional opera, kissing isn’t allowed, so they engage in passionate waist touching instead.

As the bell went for the interval, Alfred turned to Josh. “What do you think?”

“It’s magical! I wish I could write music. It’s the most perfect art, don’t you think?”

“It’s the hardest. You can be a hack writer or indifferent painter, but you can’t be a bad musician.”

“If I could write a decent tune, I wouldn’t care about anything else. I can’t wait to see what happens.”

“The libretto’s there.”

“I’m not looking. I hate spoilt endings.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but at the end of your life, you die.”

Josh made a face. “You know what I mean.” He stared at the ices. “Say, can Sidonie eat? Where would you take a robot on a date?”

Alfred blushed. “The same places as anyone else.”

“Telling a stranger about yourself, ugh! Better to go out with your friends and have a laugh.”

Mercifully the bell went.
Sidonie and Hans fall in love. More face touching and eye fucking -

“Does he
know
she’s a robot?”

“Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. Depends on the production.”

“I think this one suspects but doesn’t want to admit it.”

“I think so too.”

The boys notice Hans is different but don’t know why. Aaron announces his intention of wooing Sidonie and, before anyone can stop him, goes to Borkin’s and introduces himself. The doctor hurls him into the street. He barges into Sidonie’s room, where he vows no one else will touch her.

“That’s creepy and unnecessary,” Josh commented.

“A few sessions with a shrink’ll do wonders.”

“He looks like Dr Sugar, don’t you think?”

“Imagine
him
singing an aria.” They stifled giggles.

“It’d be about how, when he was young, he had a full head of hair and was the best anything
ever
. He always has to be better than you for some reason.”

“Can’t think why. I could never build a robot.”

“What’s Thingummy?”

“A caprice, dear boy.”

Sidonie is relieved when she learns the visitor wasn’t Hans. Holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes, they have opera sex, i.e. lie down as a sheet obscures them from view, though the music gives you a good idea what’s going on. Once Alfred had got frisky with an usher at this point. It had a similar effect on him now: the sensual music, the proximity of Josh, the scents of whisky and cologne. Damn the eroticism of opera boxes!